"Caroline, what are you doing here?"
"Hello, Tyler," Caroline said pointedly. "This is where you're living these days. How… rustic."
Caroline raised an eyebrow, and cast a judgemental eye through his dorm, noting the unfamiliar woman in his bed.
"Are you okay, Care?" Tyler said, hurriedly stepping through the door, pulling it closed behind him to cease her survey of his quarters. "With everything?"
"Everything? What a funny euphemism to point out my dead mother, Tyler," she said sardonically, rolling her eyes. "I'm not here to chit-chat actually. I want Hayley's number."
Taken aback Tyler scrunched his face in incredulity.
"Hayley's number?"
"Yes, Hayley's number," Caroline repeated, rolling her eyes again. "Hayley. Remember her? Wolf bitch? Flat, almost mullet-like, hair? Big doe eyes that always looked as vacant as that dirty, rat infested motel off the interstate driving out of Mystic Falls?"
"Why would you even want it?" Tyler replied, choosing to ignore Caroline's unkind description of his friend.
Caroline rolled her eyes a third time, and sighed dramatically.
"Because, Tyler," she spat out his name as though she had a mouthful of vervain. "I have some unfinished business with her. And it's about time she hears my thoughts."
"Caroline, I'm not going to give you –"
Tyler's sentence was interrupted, as Caroline grabbed him by the throat and pinned him to his door, letting her fangs drop and eyes grow dark.
"You will do it Tyler," Caroline said her voice now menacing.
She let him drop and crumple to the floor, before folding her arms and beginning to tap her foot in quick tempo.
Looking stunned and irritated, Tyler blundered into his dorm to retrieve his phone.
"You need to keep it together, Caroline," he said, fumbling with the phone in his hand. "I know you're trying to be all tough and no-humanity, but it's not going to bring your mom back."
As Tyler finished speaking, Caroline heard an electronic noise signal a new message.
"Thank you for your service, Tyler," Caroline said mockingly as she turned and walked away.
xxx
Hayley was pacing frenziedly around her room.
Klaus had been missing for nearly two days, and there was not a single lead as to wear he was. She may not have always seen eye-to-eye with Klaus, nor did she even particularly like him most of the time. But the fact of the matter was that they were family now, for better or for worse.
In a moment filled with a terrible frustration, she picked up an old vase, flowers and all, and hurled it against the wall – hoping the outburst would relieve her of some of this maddening anxiety.
"Are you okay?"
Flashing at vampire speed through the door of her bedroom came Elijah Mikaelson.
Normally the sight of his face calmed her somewhat, but today it only reflected the worry of her own face.
"Where is he, Elijah?" she cried, as his arms wrapped tightly around her.
"I don't know, Hayley," he said. "I don't know."
They stayed like that for sometime, before a vibrating sound could be heard through the breast pocket of Elijah's suit.
"What's that?"
"It's your phone," Elijah said, pulling it out. "It has been vibrating rather consistently. I just picked it up to bring to you when that vase met its ill-fated end."
Hurriedly, in the wild hopes that it was Klaus, Hayley tore the phone from Elijah's hand to answer it.
"Klaus!" she said into the receiver, without thinking.
"Well, well, well," a bored voice said down the phone. "She finally decides to answer."
"Who is this?" Hayley hissed.
"Oh, who do you think it is Fish Lips? the voice said.
"I swear to god if you hurt so much as a hair on Klaus' head, I will destroy you," she gritted out in response.
"Oof, second Klaus in three sentences, someone has her baby-daddy on the brain. I should have expected nothing more from you. Stole my first love, now trying to steal my last love."
"Who is this?" she screamed into the phone.
"Why it's Caroline of course," she said, a cheerful note breaking into her condescension at Hayley's apparent inability to keep it together. "What's up with Klaus anyway."
"Caroline? Why the fuck are you calling me, you bitch!" Hayley spat.
"Language! Gosh! Such the guttersnipe," Caroline chided. "I'm just calling to remind you that you're the worst. And to remind you that Klaus did say I would be his last love, and not you."
"Is that it?" Hayley replied, still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
"Pretty much, you seem worked up enough without me bothering you, which is just so good to hear," Caroline was still talking with that cheery air, and it was driving Hayley up the wall. "What's up with Klaus anyway? Jealous he's paying someone else attention?"
"He's missing, you bitch," Hayley said, gritting her teeth once more.
"Another 'you bitch'? Tut-tut Hayley, you gotta be a little pithier than that to be a real Mikaelson."
Caroline grinned as she she heard a strangled noise come through the phone, having ever-such-fun toying with they brunette woman.
"Anyway, I'm gonna go now, bet you like a thousand Mikaelson dollars that I can find Klaus before you can, bye bitch!"
And with that Caroline joyously hung up the phone, and began packing a bag for a trip to New Orleans.
xxx
When Klaus came to his head was pounding in a way he couldn't remember it pounding in a millennium.
He could barely remember anything before that moment of consciousness over the pain he was experiencing, but he forced himself to think.
Knowledge was power.
And to get out of this he neededboth knowledge and power.
He tried to think, he tried to see, but all there was, was the throbbing behind his eyes, and vague flashes of memory that were coloured like fireworks.
Maybe that meant an encounter with the local witches? Bright colours weren't usually their style though.
He warred with his mind, trying to remember.
He had been looking for something.
A few days ago he had been visited by…
A wolf…? A witch…? A wolf and a witch…? A wolf who was a witch…?
They had information about… about?
And suddenly, a memory sparked, and he could see everything through his discomfort.
His eyes flew open, and he began desperately searching for the tiny trinket that meant so much to him, and yet all he could see was a slew of dead bodies their blood and entrails blanketing the stone floor like undergrowth in a wood.
He could see, but he could not comprehend, not without what he needed to find.
"Looking for this?" a sing-song voice said from a little ways away.
Swinging from the delicate finger, Klaus saw what he sought, and saw a face he never expected to see. But before he knew it, the pain in his body overwhelmed him, and he passed out again.
"I knew he'd faint at the sight of me," she giggled, as though she had an audience.
xxx
When Klaus was roused again, he felt much more himself than the last time.
He opened his eyes and sitting by his bed was none other than Caroline Forbes, a bottle of wine in one hand – a bottle which, unless he was very much mistaken, was a nearly three-hundred-year old Italian bottle of Malbec bottle from one of his cellars – and her phone in the other.
"You owe me a thousand dollars," she said dryly, not looking up from her phone.
"I beg your pardon, love?"
"Are you suddenly deaf in your old age, Klaus?" Caroline intoned, taking a swig from the bottle and rolling her eyes at him. "I said, you owe me a thousand dollars."
Amused, and somewhat calm seeing she had his trinket around her neck, Klaus chuckled.
"And why is that, sweetheart?"
"I bet Hayley a thousand dollars that I could find you first," she shrugged. "Not that the lazy piece of snake skin looked all that hard for you."
"Then it is Hayley that owes you, not I, love," he quipped.
"Oh come on," Caroline scoffed. "She wouldn't lend me the toothbrush she uses to clean the toilet, Klaus."
He laughed heartily at her response, and studied her face. She was stunning, as always. And there was a new shadow he'd not seen before. He had heard tell of her mother's passing, and the shadow indicated she was using the grieving period to explore her darker side.
"You're looking lovely, Caroline," he said.
"Please," she drawled. "I am an absolute bombshell, and all you can manage is 'lovely'. What is this anyway?"
Still not looking up from her phone, she gestured disinterestedly at what lay around her neck.
"That is something very important to me," Klaus sighed, pulling himself from the bed to go crouch beside her, delicately stroking the object in question.
"No shit, Klaus," she said, bored once more, though this time she finally looked up meeting his eye. "I had to kill like six really powerful witches to get my hands on it. And save you, by the way, which I haven't heard a thank you for yet."
"Thank you, love."
"It was so much less boring than my intro-to-how-to-freshman-bio that boring brunette dopple-cure enrolled us in, that's for sure."
"How did you manage it, by the way? The" Klaus asked, after chuckling once more at her derisive response. "They over powered me, and no offence, love, I'm me."
"And a fine specimen you are," she said, a dark, flirty note to her voice. "I had the element of surprise. Plus, I'm a bombshell remember?"
"I could never forget," Klaus matched her tone, and flicked his eyes to her lips, wondering if he dared catch.
"Uh-uh, Klaus, you ain't kissing these puppies without at least paying your baby-momma's thousand-dollar debt to me, and telling me what the heck I risked me life for."
He chuckled again, she truly was a joy like this.
Then again, he was sure he'd find her a joy no matter what.
"This, Caroline, is a chess piece."
He plucked it from around her neck, and deftly swiped the bottle of wine at the same time, taking a hefty swig of his own.
"The magic in it is what is keeping Rebekah and my daughter safe from the evils trying to smite them both from the face of the planet."
"So pretty important then," she replied.
"Indeed."
"Then you owe me two-thousand dollars, Klaus."
With that, in one fluid movement, she reclaimed the wine, stood from her chair, straddled him for the briefest of seconds to grind one into him then was off toward the door.
"Where are you going!" Klaus panted indignantly.
"School! I have class in the morning!"
"But what –"
"Raincheck babe, my ass will be this great next time you see me, promise."
As she reached the door to his room, she wiggled her ass enticingly for him. And before the wink she threw over her should was done, she was gone.
Leaving an entirely more smitten Klaus in her wake.
Hello! This is one I wrote for CorinaLannister for the Klaroline Winter Wonderland Gift Exchange! Hope you enjoyed it ;) apparently I love writing no-humanity Caroline at the moment hehehe.